Word of the Day

: May 16, 2015

hinterland

noun HIN-ter-land

What It Means

1 : a region lying inland from a coast

2 a : a region remote from cities

b : a region lying beyond major metropolitan or cultural centers

hinterland in Context

The enormous Greenland Ice Sheet covers most of the hinterland of the world's largest island.

"I know my country, and my fellow countrymen; the people I was meeting were simple souls, scraping a living in Yemen’s tough agricultural hinterland. Large political questions were far from their minds." - Baraa Shiban, The Guardian (London), April 6, 2015

Did You Know?

When you're dealing with geography, it helps to know your hinterland from your umland. In the late 19th century, geographer George Chisholm took note of the German word Hinterland (literally, "land in back of") and applied it specifically to the region just inland from a port or coastal settlement. (Chisholm spelled the word hinderland, but English speakers eventually settled on hinterland.) Early in the 20th century, another geographer adopted the German Umland ("land around") to refer to the territory around an inland town. What hinterland and umland have in common is a reference to a region economically tied to a nearby city. But nowadays hinterland has a less technical use as well; it's used for land that's simply out in the sticks.